How to Be a Sister

THE SUMMER OF the chicken sandwich ended. After my visit, I flew back to New Mexico, said good-bye to my friends, packed up my things, and drove a quaking U-Haul from south to north with one nervous dog, two angry cats, and my spouse, Brendan, who insisted on playing his guitar in the truck cab, so I had to drive for thirteen hundred miles with one hand guarding the right side of my head. Now we all lived in Oregon, a mere five hours from my childhood home. I was nearer to the family tree, but not much closer to figuring out what I was supposed to do about Margaret.

She was on my mind a lot that first year, even at the most unlikely times, like when I was supposed to be working. Jobs were scarce in the beautiful little tourist town I moved to, so I took any kind of work I could get, including teaching English to migrant fruit pickers and working in a brownie factory, although I was trained for neither. I also wrote some stories for the local newspaper. They asked me to do a couple of features for the bridal guide, the kind of pieces that the regular staff would refuse to do, the kind of story I had balked at when I was a salaried newspaper person myself. But as the new freelancer in town, I was grateful to be working at all. So I knew I should be paying attention to my assignment instead of letting my mind wander to my big sister. But I just couldn’t help myself. She ran amok in my imagination, just as she had in my life.

As I worked my way through the interviews for the bridal stories, one wedding planner made a really big impression on me with her kind of no-bullshit approach to putting on the Big White Dress Show. She was very tall, blonde, and had that kind of Germanic competence that made me believe she was capable of just about anything. If the bridal party got caught in traffic, she could pick up the limo with one hand and wade to safety. That’s the impression Teresa made. Maybe that’s why I found myself dying to ask her the most inappropriate questions during our interview.

The topic of my story was second weddings, and we had kind of wandered into the territory of difficult relatives. I found myself wanting to ask, “So what would you do, then, after seating the ex-stepmother-in-law of the bride, I mean, and somebody started, I don’t know, running around the church and singing or something? Or what if somebody started laughing really hard during the vows? A guest, I mean. An adult. How would you handle that?”

I really did want to know the answers. Teresa seemed like she might be the one person who could help me sort out what had happened in my own past. Hashing things out with her might be a kind of bridal morbidity and mortality session, like what hospitals have to assess why people died. Although it wouldn’t change what had already happened, I was comforted by the thought that somebody else might have known how to handle things. In the end, however, I figured this line of questioning could kill the flow of the interview, so I didn’t ask.

I thought about my own wedding, years before. It was hard to believe that I was no longer in my twenties, but back then it was harder for me to believe that I’d ever get married at all. I was shocked by the fact that I liked anyone enough to spend seven days a week with him without wanting to do him bodily harm. I’m not the most patient person, and this was, after all, a man who borrowed my toothbrush, lost my apartment keys, frequently stepped on me as he was crossing a room, elbowed me in the face every time he put on his seat belt, locked me out of the apartment for hours at a time, or, alternatively, left my apartment door wide open when he left so that any of the junkies in my building could have let themselves in to make a sandwich or smoke some crack. This was Brendan—generally an hour late for everything while I was fifteen minutes early. Somehow, it seemed, we belonged together.

Like many young people, I hadn’t given much thought to the marriage part of things. I figured that would take care of itself. I had more important things on my mind. I was worried about the wedding, the cake, my sister, and her autism. And not necessarily in that order.

MARGARET WOULD APPEAR to love weddings. She shows great enthusiasm whenever the topic comes up. But the truth is, Margaret loves wedding cake. To her, the entire affair—the invitations, the fancy clothes, the sacred vows, the touching family photos, the lavish banquet, the general hullabaloo—is meaningless, tiresome filler. She focuses her energies completely upon that magic moment during the reception when the lovely couple finally cuts the goddamn cake and lets everyone else have a piece. Nothing wrong with that, is there? The trouble is, everything that happens before the fork hits the plate doesn’t interest her much. It’s downtime, really. A tedious waiting period most often filled, depending on her mood, with laughter or tears, and not the quiet, happy, wedding kind.

When we were growing up, I don’t recall that Margaret made a scene at anyone’s wedding reception. Which isn’t to claim that she didn’t make any memorable fuss. It’s just that by that point in the evening she had so much competition that it’s likely any outburst might have gone unnoticed. Irish Catholic receptions are really just one big scene, after all—a big drinking, fighting, dancing scene. More than once I heard my grandmother say on the way to the car after one of these high-energy, boozy affairs, “Oh, wasn’t that lovely! And nobody fell down.” Her parents owned a tavern after (and during) Prohibition, which is one reason she didn’t drink until she was almost seventy; this woman has seen it all, so she knows what she is talking about.

But wedding ceremonies, even for rowdy Irish Catholics like us, are supposed to be different. The marriage rites are generally a time of quiet and reverence, a time to focus on the sacred union between two people who have chosen to (try to) spend (they hope) the rest of their lives together.

Weddings can range widely within an acceptable scope of good taste—religious versus secular, indoor or outdoor, tuxes and silk as opposed to beach attire are just a few types that come to mind. However, I can say with some certainty that most marriage ceremonies don’t include a rousing, hand-clapping solo of “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad” from one of the guests. I was almost a teenager before I realized that this kind of musical interlude was not common at nuptial services. No, in fact, this kind of thing was actually viewed as a disruption, the kind engineered by my sister Margaret.

Margaret’s particular solo went something like this: “Someone’s in (clap) the kitchen (clap) with Di (clap) NAH! (clap clap) Someone’s in (clap) the kitchen (clap) I knowoh-oh-oh!” and concluded with a resounding, “Ha! Ha! Ha! You be quiet, Margaret!” as my sister scolded herself loudly at the end of the verse.

Sometimes such an outburst would include a game of tag, with my mother being “It.” This game often drew withering looks from the officiating priest as my chortling sister ran up the aisle and around the altar with my silent, grim-faced mother in hot pursuit. How often I watched my big sister Margaret sprinting around the Eucharistic minister, or rocking from side to side in her wide-leg stance up on the altar, clapping and singing. Sometimes she’d just start laughing during a quiet part of the service, or scold herself in a parroting of our mother’s voice. “Margaret, now you behave! Now you be quiet!” Her voice seemed to echo endlessly across the cool, quiet sanctuary. Or perhaps when my mother whispered in her ear (“Margaret, you have to be quiet or we have to leave”), we’d hear only Margaret’s side of the conversation, as if she were on the phone. “No! Okay! That’s good behaving, Mom!” I’d sink down in the pew, thankful that it was always pretty dark in Sacred Heart Catholic Church, hoping people would think it was somebody else’s family making all the noise.

These episodes all ended the same way: my gentle mother wordlessly hauled Margaret, who was either wailing or laughing, down the aisle and to the back of the church as half of the congregation turned to watch while the other half pretended that nothing was happening. The doors at the back of the church would bang shut behind them, heads would swivel back to the priest, and then the service would continue.

I actually can’t remember a wedding service in my childhood that Margaret did not contribute to in some very memorable way. Maybe that’s because if she’d behaved herself, I wouldn’t have had anything to remember. The celebrations I do recall are absolutely burned into my memory. As I write this, I can still feel the frozen stare of a bride and groom, family friends, as the entire congregation turned to look at the Garvins. It was 1978. The groom’s eyes were wider than his tie. The bride craned her veil-covered head over one puffy satin and lace shoulder pad to try to locate the source of an undeniable and unbelievable ruckus from our pew. I don’t remember what Margaret had done. Only that it was so loud that even the priest couldn’t ignore it and had paused in the middle of the ceremony to look our way.

This is how it went through the marriages of our cousins, family friends, and second cousins. And at some point we’d usually get to share the spotlight when Margaret performed her routine, always unique and never predictable. Suffice it to say people never had to say, years later, “Did the Garvins come to our wedding? I just can’t remember.” They always remembered.

THINKING BACK ON all this as I wrote my bridal stories, it struck me that we could have used someone like Teresa, not so much as a wedding planner but as a kind of crisis manager. Perhaps Teresa could have been our Emily Post of autism, the person to smooth out the crazy in our lives and make things seem more normal. This woman handled inclement weather, ill-behaved relatives, and emotional meltdowns without getting a hair out of place. Months after I interviewed her for my wedding feature, I read about her in the news section of our little paper when she pulled off one of the most heroic wedding rescues I’ve ever heard of. When a wildfire drove one wedding party from their site, she rushed over to another wedding she was managing on the same day at a different location and convinced the other bride to let the first couple come on over and share the same reception area—all this as the bride was marching down the aisle. When I read that story, I thought, “Man, she is tough!” But when all was said and done, I still didn’t think Teresa would have been any match for Margaret.

When my siblings and I got married, my sister’s history as Most Memorable Guest gave us some pause. I wasn’t the only one asking myself, “What should I do about Margaret?” Over the years the question weighed heavily on each of us as we, by turns, got engaged and planned the Big Day. Our oldest sister, Ann, tested the waters first, marrying her college sweetheart, Rob, when she was just twenty-one. Being the oldest, her instincts were untested and kind of screwed up, so she asked Margaret and me to be bridesmaids along with her best girlfriends, Bridget and Lori. Maybe if she had been older, or if she hadn’t been the first lemming over the ledge, she might have been too smart to ask either of us. I don’t know which was the more foolish choice—the sixteen-year-old who got superdrunk and threw up in the parking lot at the reception behind her boyfriend’s van (me) or the nineteen-year-old autistic sister who threw such a fit before the ceremony even began that our mother nearly missed the wedding (Margaret).

The trouble began early one chilly afternoon a few days before Christmas in 1986. We’d all gathered at St. Aloysius Church with the groom’s parents and his five siblings for a couple of hours of pre-wedding torture known as Wedding Photo Time. The idea was to get the pictures out of the way early in order to enjoy an afternoon ceremony and evening reception. It was a simple misunderstanding, really. Margaret thought she would get wedding cake after the wedding photos were over. She did not understand that the pictures came first, and then we sat around in scratchy taffeta, freezing our asses off in the unheated church basement in the middle of winter, waiting for the wedding to start. Then came the two-hour ceremony in a frigid, cavernous church. After that we went to the reception and went through the niceties of the receiving line, heartfelt speeches, and special dances. THEN came the cake. This was just too much information for my sister; I’ve come to believe that it’s too much information for anybody, really.

As this miscommunication unfolded, we were about in the middle of the grueling picture-taking process. There we were, seven Garvins and eight Modarellis in our new shoes and nice clothes being poked and prodded and repositioned by the grouchy photographer, who was wearing way too much Old Spice. Our families barely knew each other, and here we all were, crowded shoulder to shoulder, just hours before the ceremony that would clinch the lifelong union of the oldest children. It was awkward, but just in that regular wedding way. The tension mounted to an irregular level when it became clear that Margaret was winding herself up for a supreme blowout.

She made it through the pictures with a few tears here and there, asking where in the hell the cake was. And then she simply came undone, throwing herself on the floor of the church, kicking and screaming in her beautiful maroon taffeta dress that our mother had stitched by hand. “You want cake and punch! You want cake and punch! Cake! And! Punch! Noooooooo!” She rolled around on the floor in front of everyone, banging the sturdy plastic handle of her bridesmaid’s bouquet at our feet. “Noooooooooo! You want CAKE AND PUNCH! Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Nooooooooooooooooo!”

This was pretty much what my brothers and I had been waiting for all day; we knew it was just a matter of time before Margaret lost her grip. But I will never forget the silent horror on the Modarelli kids’ faces. I mean, who yells in church? Who pounds her dyed-to-match satin pumps against the marble altar steps? Who kicks and screams and throws her legs over her head so you can see the white crotch of her pantyhose? My sister, that’s who.

When it became clear that she was not going to calm down in the next half hour, let alone make it through the service, my mother announced that she would take Margaret home, and nearly missed the wedding of her firstborn. Happily, a kind friend of Ann’s stepped up and volunteered to take Margaret to her place and hang out with her until the wedding was over. Meg somehow managed to coax Margaret out of the church and into her car. The rest of us started breathing again, pulled ourselves together, and soldiered on, because that’s what you do at a wedding. Ann and Rob suffered the minor awkwardness of having an extra groomsman at the altar, but I doubt anyone even remembers that.

In later years, I couldn’t remember if Margaret actually made it to the reception, because I had been too busy getting drunk in preparation for my big throw-up scene. So I recently asked Ann, and she confirmed that Margaret had, in fact, made it to the party. “Oh, yes. Yes, she did. She had CAKE! AND! PUNCH! Mom said she had such a good time that her nylons were in shreds by the time she got home,” Ann said, adding “I have no idea what that means.”

BY THE TIME I got married, twelve years later, I’d had a lot of time to think about what to do about Margaret. I knew that I had to approach this situation assuming that something would probably go wrong, and with great gusto. But I wanted Margaret to come, and that was just fine with Brendan, who was so overwhelmed with the complications of planning a wedding that he just said yes to everything and then left the country for two months. However, in an attempt to learn from history, I thought it might be useful to decrease my mother’s status as a flight risk. So I suggested that one of the staff members who worked at Margaret’s group home come along and be her date. That suited everybody just fine.

Felicia drove Margaret to Seattle from Spokane and the two of them shared a motel room at the same place everyone else was staying. Felicia brought my big sister to a party we had the day before we got married, and the two of them did some sightseeing on their own. They even came together to an impromptu ladies-only breakfast the day of the wedding, and because Felicia was in charge of Margaret, I got to visit with my mother and Ann without worrying about which one of us was going to have to leave the table and deal with Margaret if she decided to chuck her French toast across the table at a cousin or bridesmaid.

During the wedding itself, I didn’t hear Margaret at all. She sat quietly with her date, looking pretty in a pale yellow dress with small red flowers on it. Then again, there was quite a ruckus going on anyway, so I might not have noticed if she was being noisy. First of all, Brendan and I got married on an antique ferryboat on Lake Union in Seattle, and the regular boat traffic was going by during the ceremony. We had recruited a large yellow Labrador retriever named Honey to bear the rings, and the dog was so excited by all the people and the smells that she kind of detoured around for a while, attempting to greet everybody, and had to be coaxed back to her job. The amateur bagpipers, whom we hadn’t really screened very well, seemed to have trouble getting started at the same time and wheezed along jerkily as we marched down the aisle. At one point there was a spontaneous a cappella performance from the Balkan men’s quartet from our soccer team, who showed up in their eye-catching skirts.

Also, we couldn’t get our unity candle to light for several long minutes, which caused a lot of nervous laughter. When we finally did get the damn thing lit, Brendan was so relieved that he put down his still-burning taper and nearly set fire to the fancy tablecloth under the candle. Then he snatched up the taper and blew it out, extinguishing the unity candle all over again. Our kind and exasperated minister pushed us out of the way and whipped out one of those huge plastic barbecue lighters, which she used to relight our wick. I try not to think about the symbolism of this part of the ceremony and its possible spiritual implications for our marriage. The point is that it is possible I just didn’t notice any outburst from my sister. I had reconciled myself to some kind of Margaret-sized contribution, but I didn’t hear a peep.

When it came time to cut the cake, however, I did notice a big, adult-sized finger swipe in the frosting on the front of it, but no one else saw it, and I just moved a flower to cover it up. Our friends and family gathered around the cake table listening to toasts, and Margaret hovered at the edge of the crowd, nervously twisting her fingers but waiting patiently for us to get down to business. I was so proud of her at that moment, and I really wanted to acknowledge what she’d done, even if nobody else would really understand. So before we served anyone else, I took the microphone and explained with a catch in my voice that my big sister got the first piece of cake because she had waited so quietly, so tolerantly until we were ready to serve. Everyone clapped as Margaret grabbed the plate out of my hand, saying, “Thank you, Eileen!” But before too many hearts were warmed by this scene, she was back, spitting out a bite of lemon poppy seed cake, setting her plate down with a clang, and demanding a piece of chocolate.

OUR BROTHER MICHAEL didn’t invite Margaret to his wedding when he got married the following year. But he didn’t invite children, either, or dogs or bagpipers, for that matter. Michael’s was a lovely, elegant ceremony on the patio of a small Italian restaurant in San Francisco, and it was just what he wanted. He did not want to stand up there, facing his gorgeous bride in front of the intimate crowd and wonder when his big sister might run up and give him a big spanking. So he didn’t invite her, and she didn’t spank him, and everyone was the happier for it. I doubt that Margaret’s life was severely diminished by not attending this wedding. Sometimes we just don’t get to go.

Our brother Larry got married the same year as Michael and did invite Margaret to his wedding. But for one thing, Larry got married in our hometown. For another, Larry and Heidi had met volunteering during the Washington State Special Olympics and knew many adults with disabilities. Several of the young athletes were invited to the wedding. A particularly gregarious pair of young men showed up two hours before the ceremony and sat in the back of the somber church on the Gonzaga University campus, the same place where Ann had been married. Every once in a while, as we bustled around getting ready, one of them would call out “Hiiiiiii, Laaaaaarry!” from their pew. Needless to say, Heidi and Larry were both prepared for some dynamic behavior. Margaret was there for photos, but only for a few, and she did just fine. It was the rest of us, bridesmaids and groomsmen, who suffered through two hours of posing in the hot sunshine.

Michael, Ann, and I each had a role in the wedding, so Ann’s friend Lori, the same one who had been Ann’s bridesmaid, volunteered to sit with Margaret so that my parents could concentrate on their son’s sacred union. Margaret was safely ensconced next to her before the rest of us Garvin sibs marched up the aisle. Even so, we couldn’t help but watch her as we stood up at the altar of the church, which was as hot in the summer as it had been cold in the winter. During a quiet moment of the ceremony, we all saw Margaret reach out quietly with her right hand and try to pinch Lori under the chin. Lori appeared not to notice and kept looking straight ahead and didn’t blink an eye. I flinched in empathy; Margaret had occasionally nailed me before in that same soft spot, and it hurt like hell. Plus, you couldn’t see it coming.

Oh, no, I thought, Here we go. But then, wham! Lori caught Margaret’s wrist with her hand, and wham! she anticipated the left sneaking in for the finish. She didn’t even take her eyes off the altar. Margaret snickered, but not loudly. I tried very hard to look at a spot on the wall at the back of the church so that I wouldn’t lose my composure and start snorting. And I could sense Larry, Ann, and Michael doing the same. Our sister kept trying, unsuccessfully, to pinch Lori during the rest of the service. But she did not sing, or laugh, or make any noticeable noise that I remember. Maybe she was having too much fun messing with Lori.

Of all the wedding receptions, I think Margaret had the best time at Larry and Heidi’s. I know I did. It was an enormous affair at the Spokane Country Club. I felt like I was at a football game. I passed people I hadn’t seen in years, swept along in the buffet line, and shouted, “Hi! I’ll meet you by the bar!” only to be carried along in the current to the dance floor. It was a great party—fun and raucous with lots of people misbehaving and everyone looking gorgeous. One of the Special Olympians lost a beer-drinking contest early in the evening and took off all his clothes in the men’s room. Someone had to call his mom to come pick him up, but she was very cheerful about it. Another guest, a young intern from Larry’s law firm, got drunk and jumped naked into the fountain later that evening. This didn’t go over so well. We Garvins are not as tolerant toward those who should know better, mostly because we have to give so much rope to those who don’t.

Looking back on this, I remembered that I’d done all my misbehaving the night before, so I sipped soda water and nursed a hangover, people-watching and enjoying my family. Larry looked so handsome in his tuxedo, and so did Michael, the best man. Our parents were absolutely glamorous in their fancy clothes, although both of them later confessed that their feet were killing them—my dad with his gout, and my mom not used to her sexy high heels. All I saw of Ann was her back as she dragged her jet-lagged and wailing children out to the car. My second cousin’s kids held me hostage for a good fifteen minutes telling me a gruesome story about a nest of ’coons in the attic and how their gun-toting dad had taken care of them. But here was my beautiful and hugely pregnant cousin Kathy and her husband, David. My hilarious cousin Pat and his wife, Karen, had brought their lovely little girl, in whose face and name I saw my great-grandmother. There were babies everywhere, aunts and uncles, and my tiny, wonderful grandmother gripping her wineglass by the stem and beaming nearsightedly at everyone. It was a regular wedding reception. See, I thought, we can be normal.

Margaret had on a lovely plum-colored skirt and a matching jacket. She wore black hose and black flats. One of the staff members at her group home had helped her put on makeup. She was actually smiling, somehow not put off by all the noise and the people. Lori told us later that they had stopped for cupcakes between the church and the country club in an attempt to fend off any cake-related anxiety, and I imagine that the sugar had helped improve her mood.

That night as I watched my older sister Margaret, my heart was full. It made me happy that she could sometimes blend in with the rest of us and not have everyone staring at her, making her seem like the odd one out. Although she couldn’t express complicated sentiments, I imagined she liked to feel included just like the rest of us did. I felt a surge of gratitude toward my new sister-in-law for making room in her life for Margaret.

Later, when the groomsmen and bridesmaids were making toasts, Margaret hustled in close so she could get right up next to the cake. All eyes were fixed on the lovely couple as their friends and siblings took turns telling funny stories and expressing their good wishes. Cameras flashed as people recorded the special moment.

I’d like to believe that everyone was so intent on the words of love and encouragement pouring into the microphone that probably not very many people noticed Margaret. My dear sister, who had edged in right next to the bride and groom, was waiting tensely, eyes on the cake, with the hem of her skirt tucked down into the front of her pantyhose.

Michael’s wife, who was standing next to me, noticed, too. “Oh, no,” we said in unison. My mother was standing closest to Margaret, and I tried desperately, silently, to get her attention. Mom saw me gesturing wildly and misunderstood. Thinking I was pointing to the bride and groom, she smiled at me, her eyes shining with joyful tears. “I know,” she mouthed. “Just beautiful!”